the public domain (2016) 30'

In 2014 I wrote a piece for 1000 voices, called crowd out. It was mostly 1000 people yelling, but it had some speaking, singing, whispering, clapping and movement in it, and it focused on the idea that we lose something as individuals when we enter inside a crowd. I enjoyed making the piece so much that I decided to make another piece for 1000 voices, this time with much more singing, this time focusing on the opposite aspect of what makes a crowd — the things that we all share with each other, things we all have, that we all do, that we all need, and need from each other. Because my interest was to identify what might be common to us all I decided to call it the public domain.

In search of a wide range of ideas about what we think we all might share, I crowd-sourced the texts, as I had also done in 'crowd out.' All the texts are internet search engine auto-completions of the sentence “One thing we all have is our….” which gave me a list of sometimes very personal statements, from people all around the world. I didn’t use all of them. I took out those that referred to specific people, that insulted or praised a person or group, that said anything — good or bad — about a particular religion or nationality or gender, that endorsed or disparaged a particular commercial product or activity, that were pornographic. My interest was to make a text that would seem in some way universal, a list of attributes we might all agree on, that could feel in some way universal.

the public domain is designed for the entire community we live in so it doesn’t require music professionals, although they are welcome.

Performers and audience should be indistinguishable from each other. I don’t want the audience (should there be one) to feel separated from the performers, in location, dress, ethnicity, ability, etc; rather, the performers and audience should be mixed together, in all ways, so that non-performers might feel that they share the communal space with the performers. It may even be possible and even desirable to encourage audience members to join in at certain moments.